Archive for August, 2009

Hadassah’s loot from Madoff’s coffers.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1110418.htmlNEW YORK – The battered image of Hadassah, the American women’s Zionist organization, may be harmed further by the disclosure earlier this month that its former chief financial officer was a mistress to Bernard Madoff – even as she sat on the committee that invested the charity’s funds in Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme. ….

Hadassah – and possibly other charities – may be required under a federal law to give back millions of dollars taken out of Madoff accounts, even before his firm collapsed. ….

…. THE FREEZE on settlement construction, as another example, is a scam. If Israel gives something on this issue, the Western governments declare victory and go home, so to speak. …. since Israeli-Palestinian peace is not within reach, pretending it is while knowing the truth is not such a bad alternative ….

A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication.

“They plunder the organs of our sons,” read the headline in Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108384.html

But last week, in a violation of international law and the refugees’ property rights that went unnoticed both inside Israel and abroad, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, forced through a revolutionary land reform.

The new law begins a process of creeping privatization of much of Israel’s developed land, including refugee property, said Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.

Mr Netanyahu and the bill’s supporters argue that the law will cut out a whole level of state bureaucracy, make land transactions simpler and more efficient and cut house prices. ….

Israel’s founders nationalized not only the refugees’ property but also vast swathes of land they confiscated from the remaining Palestinian minority who gained citizenship and now comprise a fifth of the population. By the 1970s, 93 per cent of Israel’s territory was in the hands of the state. ….

American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a nonprofit organization that sends millions of shekels worth of donations to Israel every year for clearly political purposes, such as buying Arab properties in East Jerusalem, is registered in the United States as an organization that funds educational institutes in Israel.

The U.S. tax code enables nonprofits to receive tax-exempt status if they engage in educational, charitable, religious or scientific activity. However, such organizations are forbidden to engage in any political activity. The latter is broadly defined as any action, even the promotion of certain ideas, that could have a political impact.

Financing land purchases in East Jerusalem would, therefore, seem to violate the organization’s tax-exempt status. …

According to international law, Israel holds the property of more than four million Palestinian refugees in custodianship, until a final peace deal determines whether some or all of them will be allowed back to their 400-plus destroyed Palestinian villages or are compensated for their loss.Israel Begins Sell-Off of Refugees’ Land.

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According to international law, Israel holds the property of more than four million Palestinian refugees in custodianship, until a final peace deal determines whether some or all of them will be allowed back to their 400-plus destroyed Palestinian villages or are compensated for their loss.

But last week, in a violation of international law and the refugees’ property rights that went unnoticed both inside Israel and abroad, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, forced through a revolutionary land reform.

The new law begins a process of creeping privatization of much of Israel’s developed land, including refugee property, said Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.

Mr Netanyahu and the bill’s supporters argue that the law will cut out a whole level of state bureaucracy, make land transactions simpler and more efficient and cut house prices. ….

Israel’s founders nationalized not only the refugees’ property but also vast swathes of land they confiscated from the remaining Palestinian minority who gained citizenship and now comprise a fifth of the population. By the 1970s, 93 per cent of Israel’s territory was in the hands of the state. ….

American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a nonprofit organization that sends millions of shekels worth of donations to Israel every year for clearly political purposes, such as buying Arab properties in East Jerusalem, is registered in the United States as an organization that funds educational institutes in Israel.

The U.S. tax code enables nonprofits to receive tax-exempt status if they engage in educational, charitable, religious or scientific activity. However, such organizations are forbidden to engage in any political activity. The latter is broadly defined as any action, even the promotion of certain ideas, that could have a political impact.

Financing land purchases in East Jerusalem would, therefore, seem to violate the organization’s tax-exempt status. …

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Twenty-five Republican and 31 Democratic members of the U.S. Congress are traveling to Israel during their August recess.

The GOP mission, which began Monday, is being led by House of Representatives Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the only Jewish Republican in the Congress. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) will lead the Democratic trip, which begins Saturday.

The American Israel Education Foundation, a charitable organization affiliated with the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, is financing both missions.

The GOP lawmakers met Monday with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and participants on both trips are scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, along with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

In an Op-Ed in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Cantor wrote Monday that both trips would send a “crucial message to the Israeli people: Congress’ commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship remains steadfast,” and that differences over a settlement freeze shouldn’t obscure the “big picture” — the threat from Iran ….

“The Arab population is an inseparable part of our homeland,” he adds, however, saying that “we, the Jews, must send out a clear message that it is apparent to us that our homeland is their homeland, and that we intend to live together with them, and that we reject all the calls for forced immigration or even expulsion.”

Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said that the decision to push out Palestinian families, who have lived in the houses for more than half a century, in favour of religious Jewish settlers who claim the whole of the Palestinian territories as their own God-given land, showed that Israel was not serious about renewing peace talks.

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Judge: Israeli law applies in disputed West Bank territory

…. The decision of the Ramle judge, that the application of the law is territorial, means that Israel could confiscate land belonging to Palestinians who used to reside in the area and are now refugees, in accordance with the Absentee Properties Law. ….

…. The plans for E-1 call for building 3,500 housing units, along with commercial areas and tourism sites, to create a single urban expanse stretching from Jerusalem to Ma’aleh Adumim and strengthen Israel’s hold on East Jerusalem, which would then be completely surrounded by Jewish neighborhoods.

The United States has always vehemently opposed this plan, fearing it would deprive a future Palestinian state of territorial contiguity, cut the West Bank in two and sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank – all of which would thwart any hope of signing a final-status agreement and establishing a Palestinian state. ….

Central to the ideology of Zionism is the tale — familiar to all Jewish families — of exile, oppression, redemption and return. Booted from their kingdom, the “Jewish people” — sons and daughters of ancient Judea — wandered the earth, rootless, where they faced cruel suppression from all corners — from being forced to toil in slavery under the Egyptians, to the Spanish massacres of the 14th century and Russian pogroms of the 19th, through to the horrors of the Third Reich. ….

Zand’s central argument is that the Romans didn’t expel whole nations from their territories. Zand estimates that perhaps 10,000 ancient Judeans were vanquished during the Roman wars, and the remaining inhabitants of ancient Judea remained, converting to Islam and assimilating with their conquerors when Arabs subjugated the area. They became the progenitors of today’s Palestinian Arabs, many of whom now live as refugees who were exiled from their homeland during the 20th century. …

“There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened — hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua.”

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Deconstructing the walls of Jericho.
Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it

By Ze’ev Herzog

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze’ev_Herzogthe explosive thesis of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, a book by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand (or Sand) that sent shockwaves across Israeli society when it was published last year. After 19 weeks on the Israeli best-seller list, the book is being translated into a dozen languages and will be published in the United States this year by Verso. …..http://www.alternet.org/story/122810/Controversial Bestseller Shakes the Foundation of the Israeli State. (Snips)